Laura Bush Proposes $10 Million Initiative
to Recruit a New Generation of LibrariansThe Institute of Museum
and Library Services (IMLS) has announced that Laura Bush proposed a $10
million initiative for 2003 to recruit a new generation of librarians.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services will manage the initiative.
Funds will be used to invest in a variety of recruitment efforts such as
scholarships and fellowships for master's programs; support for doctoral
students who will train the next generation of librarians; leadership development;
distance learning for underserved rural areas; and efforts to recruit librarians
to serve increasingly diverse communities with diverse language skills.

IMLS is an independent federal
agency that fosters leadership, innovation, and a lifetime of learning
by supporting the nation's museums and libraries. IMLS administers the
Library Services and Technology Act and the Museum Services Act.

Seventh Search Engine Meeting ScheduledInfonortics has announced
that the seventh annual Search Engine Meeting, Search Engines: The Agony
and the Ecstasy, will be held April 15­16, 2002, in San Francisco.
The 2002 meeting offers in-depth exposure to the progress, problems, and
potential of search engines, with industry leaders discussing advanced
search applications both formally and informally. According to the announcement,
the meeting is designed for developers, major users, and observers of the
problems of searching for companies, data, products, records, concepts,
images, or sounds.

ATLA Announces 2002 Bibliography GrantThe American Theological
Library Association has announced that it is now accepting applications
for the 2002 ATLA Bibliography Grant (formerly the Bibliography Award).
According to the announcement, ATLA provides up to $1,500 for a bibliography
or indexing project "that provides access to a significant body of literature
within the fields of theological and/or religious studies." The grant allows
for great flexibility in terms of length and format and is meant to encourage
bibliographical or indexing work at all levels. People who have never undertaken
a major project like this before are encouraged to apply, and the grant
is open to applicants inside and outside of ATLA. Applications are due
May 1.

British Library and Elsevier Science
PartnerThe British Library has
announced that it has entered into a deal with Elsevier Science to allow
readers in The British Library Science Reading Rooms at St. Pancras, and
more than 20,000 worldwide customers of the library's document supply service,
to access more than 1,000 Elsevier titles.

The two organizations have
agreed to supply and use materials in electronic format. The agreement
means that the electronic full text produced by Elsevier Science in ScienceDirect
can be stored by The British Library to use for its public reading rooms
and document delivery requests. The 3-year deal covers all titles published
on ScienceDirect.

According to the announcement,
this partnership permits users of the library's inside service to receive
copies of articles from Elsevier material instantly for the first time.

OCLC Purchase of netLibrary Assets
FinalizedFinal closing on the sale
of netLibrary assets to Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) took place
in late January, after approval was granted by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court
for the District of Colorado. The sale included both the eBook division
and the MetaText eTextbook divisions of netLibrary.

OCLC plans to make netLibrary's
eBook operation a division of OCLC and to continue its operation in Boulder,
Colorado, serving libraries and their users. The company plans to make
the digital textbook group a for-profit subsidiary of OCLC and also to
continue its operation in Boulder. netLibrary's catalog contains approximately
40,000 titles covering a wide range of subject areas such as business,
economics, technology, the social sciences, and more. netLibrary also markets
MetaText digital textbooks, interactive, Web-based textbooks with enhanced
teaching, collaborating, and learning tools for teachers and students.
MetaText works with the leading textbook publishers to transform print
textbooks into course-centric digital textbook learning environments. The
MetaText catalog of digital textbooks, which includes more than 160 titles,
covers topical areas ranging from anthropology to zoology.

Factiva.com Service to Replace Dow
Jones Interactive and Reuters Business BriefingFactiva has announced the
launch of Factiva.com for the academic and library market. Factiva.com
will replace Dow Jones Interactive and Reuters Business Briefing, and deliver
for the first time, to schools, the content sets from these two existing
products to provide a universally indexed, global content collection of
nearly 8,000 sources in 22 languages from 118 countries.

The development of Factiva.com
for the academic and library market is based on Factiva's and ProQuest's
experience serving thousands of students, faculty, and library patrons.
For the library and academic market, ProQuest Information and Learning
has an exclusive marketing agreement to distribute Factiva.com in the Americas,
U.K., Ireland, Central Europe, and Middle East.

LexisNexis Launches Environmental UniverseLexisNexis Academic &
Library Solutions has announced the release of LexisNexis Environmental
Universe, which provides students, faculty, and librarians at academic
institutions with online access to a wide range of targeted information
on key environmental issues. LexisNexis Environmental Universe covers diverse
topics from a wide range of source types, including the first-ever online
access to Environment Abstracts, the premier LexisNexis CD-ROM resource
on environmental issues. Users also can link from LexisNexis Environment
Abstracts to many of the full-text publications.

Topics covered in LexisNexis
Environmental Universe include energy, air pollution, toxicology, land
use and pollution, global warming, waste management, agriculture and population/sustainable
development, and others from thousands of diverse sources.

ebrary Ships Pilot ebrarian 2.0 to
Consortiumebrary has announced that
it has launched ebrarian 2.0 with pilot customers in a consortium of 34
public and community college libraries in Northern California. The company
has also announced that it will globally roll out ebrarian 2.1 with advanced
features specifically for libraries this spring.

With the service, librarians
can offer patrons unlimited, multi-user access to authoritative books and
other documents from more than 100 publishers. Key features and benefits
of the new version include a custom Web site, which ebrary creates, hosts,
and maintains; integration with libraries' existing work flow, digital
resources, and catalog and administrative processes; customizable research
tools that help patrons to find and use the information they need; accounting
and reporting tools that libraries can use to gain information on usage
and transactions; and an Adobe PDF work flow.

Accessible Archives Publishes Parts
V and VI of AFRICAN-AMERICAN NEWSPAPERSAccessible Archives, Inc.,
a publisher of electronic full-text searchable historical databases, has
announced the publication of Parts V and VI of AFRICAN-AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS:
The 19th Century. According to the company, the six parts contain more
than 100,000 articles and 60 million words.

Newspapers included in this
database are made available in chronological order, with the addition of
a minimum of 10 million new words each year. The database covers titles
spanning from The Freedom's Journal, beginning in 1827, to The
Christian Recorder, completed through 1872.

This database brings together
the complete word-for-word texts of major African-American newspapers.
They are made up of early biographies; essays and editorials; social, economic,
and political observations; poetry and prose; vital statistics; and advertisements.
They also contain extensive information about the Mexican War, presidential
and congressional addresses, congressional abstracts, business and commodity
markets, the humanities, world travel, and religion.

IBSI Announces LiveAssistance Version
3.0LiveAssistance, a provider
of live human interaction software that facilitates real-time customer
service, sales, and live reference services in a one-on-one text chat,
has announced the release of version 3.0.

The new version offers increased
speed, reducing data transfer times and providing lower bandwidth users
with a significant increase in live chat speed. It also comes with the
ability to remove or customize any of the system's sounds, to download
customers' databases in a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file, to set up personalized
and individual quotes for each operator login, and to include a live chat
button in the signature of each e-mail that your company sends out.

LiveAssistance is an electronic
Customer Relationship Management (eCRM) software solution that is owned
and operated by International Business Systems, Inc. (IBSI).

TLC/CARL Releases Enhanced YouSeeMoreTLC/CARL has unveiled a
suite of new enhancements to YouSeeMore, a dynamic interactive portal that
integrates with a library's Web site and allows patrons to personalize
individual pages with streaming media, resources, and information based
on their individual preferences.

New features include "Personal
Saved Searches," whereby patrons can create stored searches for items that
are of ongoing interest to them. Now, upon login, all items relating to
the "saved search" topic will be instantly displayed. Further, a "Patron
On-line Registration" component is being developed, enabling users to pay
fines and make purchases online, as well as to receive e-mail notices.

The latest YouSeeMore provides
patrons with added customization and flexibility to more easily manage
their account settings. The company has included 12 new book lists: Edgar
Awards, British Crime Writers' Association, Anthony Awards, Bram Stoker
Awards, Agatha Awards, Hugo Awards, Nebula Awards, RITA Awards, Spur Awards,
National Book Critics Circle, World Fantasy Awards, and Pulitzer Prize.
TLC/CARL has also enabled the portal with wireless access using an iPAC
hand-held device.

Follett Integrates MARC Magician Record
Clean Up into New Version of Catalog PlusFollett Software Co. and
MITINET/marc have announced the integration of MARC Magician library record
clean up into Follett's Catalog Plus 5.0.

With this integration, library
media specialists will be able to clean up MARC bibliographic records by
transferring them between their Catalog Plus databases and MARC Magician's
automated record clean-up application. Users have to install both MARC
Magician and Catalog Plus 5.0 in order for the integration to occur.

Innovative Announces New Products at
ALAInnovative made several
announcements at ALA Midwinter. The company introduced MetaSource, a suite
of tools that allows libraries to manage their digital collections. It
includes tools for digital object storage, crawling external collections,
and full support for metadata schemes such as Dublin Core. MetaSource is
made up of Millennium Media Management, which creates and stores objects
such as images, sound, and audio files; XML Harvester, which gathers XML
records from any server; and Metadata Builder, which stores XML in the
metadata scheme of choice. Together, the company says, these tools create
a comprehensive digital library management strategy.

Innovative also showcased
two new "efficiency tools" to help libraries with electronic subscription
collections. Its Electronic Journal Holdings Update for Millennium Serials
enriches e-journal access to the Web OPAC by automatically updating holdings
statements for e-journal subscriptions using holdings data acquired from
e-journal providers and other third-party vendors.

Serials E-Checkin offers
libraries an automated method of tracking e-journals, using XML input from
the serials vendors or e-journal publishers to record the check-in transactions.
It is currently in beta testing at four Innovative libraries.

CSA to Add Links to Full Text of Project
MUSE, ingenta, and PsycARTICLES Content to IDSCambridge Scientific Abstracts
(CSA) has announced that researchers doing a search on its Internet Database
Service (IDS) can now link their search results to full-text documents
offered through Project MUSE from Johns Hopkins University Press, PsycARTICLES
from the American Psychological Association (APA), and ingenta.

EBSCO Forms Partnerships to Offer Financial
Database, Online Science Reference CollectionEBSCO Publishing has announced
an agreement with The Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc. to provide Kiplinger
Finance & Forecasts online database to corporations and public libraries.
Containing entirely searchable full text for nearly all the information
published by the Kiplinger company since 1996, this database includes business
forecasts, public policy alerts, management advice, personal finance guidance,
and more in Adobe PDF, ASCII, and HTML.

According to the company,
the database is continuously updated with the latest forecasts and outlooks
from publications including Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine,
The
Kiplinger Letter,The Kiplinger Tax Letter, Kiplinger's Retirement Report,
KiplingerForecasts.com,
and Kiplinger books.

In another agreement, EBSCO
Publishing and Marshall Cavendish have partnered to create the newly released
Science Reference Center. Containing three science encyclopedias, Encyclopedia
of Life Sciences, the Encyclopedia of Earth and Physical Sciences,
and
the Encyclopedia of Technology and Applied Sciences, this reference
collection covers science-related topics and links to thousands of articles
from science publications.

ebrary Inks Deals with University PressesLibraries and other institutions
will soon be able to offer patrons unlimited online access to full-text,
copyright-protected titles from Harvard, Cornell, and Indiana university
presses. ebrary has announced that it has partnered with the three academic
publishers so that content in key subject areas including American history,
political science, and philosophy can be made available through its online
channels.

The partnerships will enable
the publishers to distribute their titles to the growing number of libraries
and other institutions that are increasing their budgets for digital resources.

Innovative, Endeavor Partner with Syndetic
to Provide Enhanced Bibliographic ContentInnovative Interfaces and
Endeavor Information Systems have separately announced alliances with Syndetic
Solutions to provide enriched bibliographic content to their users. Users
of Innovative's Millennium library automation system and Endeavor's ENCompass
integrated system will now have the ability to access tables of contents,
reviews, book summaries, author notes, book jacket images, first chapters,
and fiction and biography profiles.

Innovative users will be
able to link to this information via the MAP (Millennium Access Plus) linking
tool. Syndetic Solutions content can be used to enrich both the Millennium
staff clients and Web OPAC displays, and is fully compliant with the MAP
(Millennium Access Plus) suite of products.

Gale and ingenta Integrate Periodicals
and E-Journals to Provide Expanded SearchingGale and ingenta have announced
that they are joining forces to create a new service that allows researchers
and librarians to use a single search to access online journals held by
both companies.

ingenta's more than 5,400
scholarly and academic electronic journals will be integrated within Gale's
signature search framework, InfoTrac.

The new service will begin
with InfoTrac OneFile and Expanded Academic this summer and will later
expand to Gale's Resource Centers.

Total periodical counts
depend on the number of Ingenta subscriptions the library holds. However,
a pay-per-view option will allow users to buy individual digitized articles
when the library doesn't hold a subscription. The new service will also
be available remotely.

Innovative Interfaces and Swets Blackwell
Introduce E-Checkin Interface for JournalsSwets Blackwell and Innovative
Interfaces, Inc. have announced their development of an automated check-in
interface for print journals through Innovative's Millennium Serials E-Checkin.

Customers of Swets Blackwell's
FastPlus journals consolidation service who use Innovative's Millennium
Serials E-Checkin are now able to automatically check in journals at the
issue level. The interface enables customers to update check-in records
for an entire FastPlus shipment via XML packing slips that are uploaded
to their Checkin Servers. In a later phase of this development, the two
companies will provide libraries with check-in data for electronic journals,
which will involve the automatic loading of URLs into libraries' OPACs.

ingenta Launches Consortial Research
Serviceingenta has announced the
launch of Consortialink, a new service connecting libraries and
publishers of academic and professional research. Managed by specialist
division Publishers Communications Group (PCG), Consortialink answers
consortial demands to negotiate electronic subscriptions and access to
research publications via a single Web interface.

The serviceis specifically
geared to providing access to research content produced by small- to medium-sized,
quality publishers who want to satisfy consortial demand, but who have
limited sales resources. Acting as an intermediary between libraries and
publishers, the program offers library consortia an easy way of acquiring
the whole of participating publishers' online content collections at heavily
discounted prices, while providing publishers with access to new markets.
Adapting a standard license agreement reduces the amount of negotiation
required, while providing access through a single Web interface simplifies
integration of the content into the library's existing online resources.

Twelve publishers have signed
up to take part in the program, producing a total of 174 scientific, technical,
and medical journalsin the new service.

Endeavor Announces ENCompass OptionsEndeavor Information Systems
has announced two new solutions for digital library management, ENCompass
for Resource Access and ENCompass for Digital Collections.

ENCompass for Resource Access
offers users a single search of all of the library's licensed databases
plus the OPAC. Providing access by Z39.50, XML gateway, and http searching,
it assures that all of the library's electronic resources are searchable.
ENCompass for Digital Collections provides tools that allow the library
to create and integrate local digital collections.

Both ENCompass solutions
can be used together for a full solution or independently with LinkFinderPlus,
Endeavor's system for comprehensive linking for all of the library's resources,
regardless of the software or information vendor.

Luna's Insight Available for Small
CollectionsLuna's Imaging has announced
the release of its Insight Hosted software, which provides online access
to collections starting at 100 images and is expandable as needs grow.
This Luna-hosted version of Insight supports collection owners who want
all of the end-user capabilities of Insight, but for a smaller number of
images and limited descriptive metadata fields. The software comes with
predefined templates, user profiles, and support for Dublin Core and VRA
Core data standards.

As with other Insight software,
users can dynamically view and work with visual materials online. Instructors
can prepare image lectures in the office and display Insight presentations
in the classroom with digital projectors or monitors.

ListenOhio Circulates Digital AudiobooksA group of 10 libraries
in Northeastern Ohio and NOLA Regional Library System has announced the
launch of ListenOhio. According to the press release, this is the world's
first shared collection of digital audiobooks. ListenOhio currently owns
more than 750 popular digital audiobook titles in MP3 format, which participating
libraries may download. While all titles are stored in MP3 format, the
content is copyright protected using a patented encryption technology from
the group's content provider, Audible.com, that limits the pool of devices
that can use the audio files. According to the group, Audible.com has helped
the group to develop an effective digital rights management system that
mimics the traditional library circulation model.

Patrons can check availability
and select titles from a central Web catalog located at http://www.listenohio.org.
Library staff then downloads the titles and loads them onto a portable
MP3 player, which the patron then "checks out" from the library. The portable
players used by ListenOhio libraries are about the size of a single cassette
tape and hold 27 hours of digital audiobook content—which permits libraries
to load multiple titles on a single device.

ListenOhio is made possible
in part through funding from The State Library of Ohio and data connectivity
provided by OPLIN.

abebooks, OCLC Team to Offer New Servicesabebooks, a network of
independent booksellers, and OCLC have announced that they are linking
to provide librarians and their users access to a large source of out-of-print
books on the Internet.

Users will be able to link
to the abebooks Web site for out-of-print, secondhand, and rare copies
of the books they are looking for in OCLC's WorldCat database and FirstSearch
service. In turn, visitors to the abebooks Web site who cannot find what
they are looking for will have the option to find the title in their local
libraries through WorldCat.

ALA Editions Launches Enhanced Web
SiteALA Editions has announced
the launch of its new Web site, http://www.ala.org/editions,
which features a new design and up-to-date content that complements the
ALA Online Store and its books. Designed to be a resource for readers and
authors, the new site includes sample chapters, author interviews, and
previews of forthcoming books.

ITI Publishes Two New ASIST MonographsInformation Today, Inc.
(ITI) has announced the publication of Evaluating Networked Information
Services: Techniques, Policy, and Issues(ISBN: 157387-118-4, $44.50,$35.60
for ASIST members), edited by Charles R. McClure and John Carlo Bertot.
This publication brings together an introduction and overview of evaluation
techniques and methods, information policy issues and initiatives, and
selected key issues related to the evaluation of networked information
services. Key issues and themes presented in this book include rapidly
evolving and changing context for evaluation; network evaluation; integrating
technical and social evaluation research perspectives; networked information
services evaluation; and cross-discipline education and training.

ITI has also announced the
publication of Information Management for the Intelligent Organization:
The Art of Scanning the Environment, third edition (ISBN: 1-57387-125-7,
$39.50, $31.60 for ASIST members), by Chun Wei Choo. This third edition
is updated and expanded to explain how an organization may manage its information
processes more effectively in order to achieve its goals. It features new
sections on information culture, information overload, and organizational
learning; a new chapter on knowledge management and the role of information
professionals; and numerous extended case studies of environmental scanning
by organizations in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Both new monographs were
published by ITI on behalf of the American Society for Information Science
and Technology (ASIST).

O'Reilly Publication Presents Hands-On
Approach to Building Large-Scale LANsO'Reilly has announced
publication of the latest book in O'Reilly's networking series, Designing
Large-Scale LANs (ISBN: 0-596-00150-9, $39.95), by Kevin Dooley.

According to the publisher,
Dooley's approach to designing a network is careful and deliberate, and
geared toward open industry standards, rather than focusing on any given
vendor's equipment.

The book describes the guiding
principles involved in putting together a stable, reliable, and manageable
large-scale network. Specific technologies are analyzed in detail: network
topologies, routing and switching strategies, wireless, virtual LANs, firewalls
and gateways, security, Internet protocols, bandwidth, and multicast services.
The book also discusses proprietary technologies that are ubiquitous, such
as Cisco's IOS and Novell's IPX.

Neal-Schuman Book Covers Digital ResourcesNeal-Schuman has published
Digital
Futures: Strategies for the Information Age (ISBN: 1-55570-437-9, $55),
by Marilyn Deegan and Simon Tanner, a resource designed to help librarians
working in the wake of a rapid expansion of electronic information understand
how to acquire, store, organize, preserve, and disseminate that information.
According to the publisher, this book shows you how to locate the electronic
resources most relevant to the needs of your users, integrate those resources
into the infrastructure of your institutions, manage the necessary technology,
and anticipate future trends.

The authors lead you through
such topics as digital futures in current contexts, why digitize?, economic
implications of digital collections, and resource recovery.

Libraries Unlimited Releases Automation
Guide for Media Centers and Small LibrariesLibraries Unlimited has
announced publication of Automating Media Centers and Small Libraries:
A Microcomputer-Based Approach, second edition (ISBN: 1-56308-879-7,
$38), by Dania Bilal.

This book covers the steps
and activities involved in automating media centers and small libraries.
Readers are guided through an overview of automated systems, planning for
automation, system architecture and hardware configurations, preparing
the collection for the automated system, implementing the automated system,
networking, OPACs and the World Wide Web, and future OPACs. It gives special
attention to current developments and practices, including the Internet,
system migration, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and roles and responsibilities
for media specialists.

Each chapter includes charts,
lists, and illustrations, along with a summary, references, and a relevant
activity.

ITI Publishes Guide to Career DevelopmentInformation Today, Inc.
has announced publication of The Information Professional's Guide to
Career Development Online (ISBN: 1-57387-124-9, $29.50), by Sarah L.
Nesbeitt and Rachel Singer Gordon. According to the publisher, this is
the first comprehensive handbook for Internet-connected librarians who are
interested in using online tools to build their skills and advance their
careers.

The authors, both experienced
librarians, operate Web sites focusing on employment opportunities for
information professionals. The book features 13 chapters organized into
four broad sections: learning and growing online, professional involvement,
education, and employment. It also includes annotated listings of useful
Web sites, discussion groups, professional organizations and conferences,
and other resources for information professionals—all accessible via the
Internet.

O'Reilly Releases Guide to Cisco CommandsO'Reilly has published Cisco
IOS in a Nutshell (ISBN: 1-56592-942-x, $34.95), by James Boney. According
to the announcement, this book covers Cisco, a fixture on today's networks
that claims roughly 70 percent of the router market, and virtually all
running the Internetwork Operating System, or IOS. Cisco IOS in a Nutshell
consolidates the most important commands and features of IOS into a single
volume. It begins with a brief, example-oriented tutorial that shows how
to accomplish common tasks.

The bulk of the book is
a quick-reference guide to the commands most commonly used in IP routing
applications. Brief descriptions and lists of options guide the network
administrator through figuring out what commands are needed to accomplish
specific tasks, from setting up a serial interface to using applications
such as packet filtering, address translation, and traffic prioritization.

O'Reilly CD Contains Six Web Design
TitlesO'Reilly has released The
Web Design CD Bookshelf (ISBN: 0-596-00271-8, $79.95),a collection that
delivers the information of six O'Reilly Animal Guides that Web designers
turn to most frequently in a single resource. Formatted in HTML, this CD-ROM
provides online access to 3,000 pages' worth of information, while taking
up less than 2 inches of shelf space. Included on the CD-ROM are unabridged
versions of HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, fourthedition;
ActionScript: The Definitive Guide; Information Architecture for the World
Wide Web; Designing Web Audio: RealAudio, MP3, Flash, and Beatnik; Web
Design in a Nutshell, second edition;and Cascading Style Sheets:
The Definitive Guide. As a bonus, The Web Design CD Bookshelf also
includes the new paperback version of Web Design in a Nutshell, 2nd
Edition.